


The Search for Clint

by pherryt



Series: New Bucky Barnes Bingo [10]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Dogs, Impala, M/M, New Hampshire, Road Trip, Search, Shifters, accidental self insert?, great winterhawk escape, missing clint, pining Bucky, the never ending road trip, the people we meet on the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25939354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherryt/pseuds/pherryt
Summary: It's a long road Bucky's on, and he can only hope Clint is at the end of it.
Relationships: Winterhawk
Series: New Bucky Barnes Bingo [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686778
Comments: 12
Kudos: 28
Collections: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2020, The Great Winterhawk Escape





	The Search for Clint

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyishBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyishBlue/gifts), [hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/gifts).



> Written as an expansion to [Agent Barnes Mission Report](https://pherryt.tumblr.com/post/626633584405610496/reporting-from-redacted-new-hampshire-agent-o) for the Great Winterhawk Escape on Tumblr.
> 
> [The Great Winterhawk Escape](https://greatwinterhawkescape.tumblr.com/) is an impromptu idea borne out of the minds of the winterhawk bingo discord (i think. a lot of us share servers together) and spearheaded by [ Hawksonfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire) and [ Greyishblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyishBlue). Greyishblue made the absolutely adorable chibi art versions of Bucky and Clint and both are currently being mailed around the world to various winterhawk shippers who signed up for the event. 
> 
> At each port of call, a picture is taken and a mission report is created and posted to the Great Winterhawk Escape on Tumblr, and then the chibi is sent on to his next destination. Eventually, our two boys _will_ be together. 
> 
> This also fills the Free Square on my Bucky Barnes Bingo Card

When Bucky pulled over at the Pheasant Lane Mall, literally straddling the state line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, he sent a text to his contact that he’d arrived. Moments later, a dark blue sedan pulled alongside him.

The Agent he’d been told to contact stepped out of the car. Short with short brown hair, brown eyes and glasses. Very unassuming. Which was a good asset for spy work, actually.

“Agent Barnes, I’m Agent O. Have you eaten?”

“Not for a couple of hours. I could do with some food if we have time,” Bucky admitted.

“We have time. There’s a Denny’s a few exits north from here. ‘bout 5 minutes. Couple of guys from another agency just rolled into town and reached out to me. Sounds like they might be working off the same intel as you. I’ll ask them to meet us there, see if they really are related.”

Bucky nodded. “Sounds good. It’s just down the road?”

“Yeah, get back on the highway, head north and take exit 6, make a left at the end of the ramp, cross the bridge and make another left. Can’t miss it,” Agent O called as they got back into the car. “Or you can just follow me.”

Finding the Denny’s was just as easy as Agent O had said, and moments later, Bucky was pulling into another parking lot. All of his time out on the road, running missions or otherwise, he didn’t think he’d ever actually been to a Denny’s, though he’d often heard some of the other Agents mention them from time to time.

Yet another new experience he’d have without Clint to share it with. He should get a souvenir.

As he stepped out of his car, some rental he’d gotten at the start of this whole thing, he saw Agent O already waiting at the entrance, but his attention was quickly snagged by the loud rumble of an engine. It was close enough that the roar of it drowned out the constant noise of the highway he could still see from here, and he turned to find a black, vintage muscle car slipping smoothly into a parking space.

Bucky appreciated it for another second or so more before turning back to the Denny’s and striding over to Agent O.

“Got us a table already and, talk about timing," Agent O said, nodding back to the two very tall men now getting out of the very car Bucky had just been admiring. “Those are the guys we’re waiting for.”

Dressed in suits, much like Agent Coulson’s but of cheaper quality, perhaps – and Bucky knew clothes – the two men quietly bickered with each other as they joined Bucky and Agent O at the Denny’s entrance. Even before they introduced themselves, Bucky’s keen hearing picked up a few things that made it absolutely _clear_ these two weren’t FBI as they said they were.

Whatever. If they had information, Bucky wouldn’t care where it came from. They could be giant pink elephants and if it was good, he’d take it.

Both men were tall, as Bucky had noted, but when they came to a stop beside him and Agent O, he couldn’t help but feel dwarfed by them as they turned out to be very much taller than he’d expected. Clint sized, in fact.

Dammit, was everything going to just remind him of Clint today?

“I’m Agent Smith, this is Agent Wesson,” the shorter of the two men said, holding out a hand. “But you can call me Dean, and him Sam.”

Bucky shook their hands, as did his contact. The agents-who-were-not-really-agents were extremely informal despite their suits and he didn’t bother with anything more than “Bucky” in return.

Stepping inside, their waitress greeted them and led them to a corner booth past a dividing wall. This section of the diner held no one else, but Bucky still made sure to put his back to the wall so he could keep the rest of the room in sight. Agent O sat beside him on the inside with a knowing look, and Sam and Dean sat opposite of them.

Everyone waited till the food had been ordered and arrived, before digging into the matter at hand.

“What we’re about to tell you is highly classified. We're after a sleeper cell,” sam said, a laptop appearing on the table as if by magic. He swung it about to show a cascade of sites and clippings.

Bucky almost flinched at the words but managed to hide it, like the well-trained agent that he was, merely leaning in to look at the data Sam had pulled up for him.

“A rogue pack of shifters, infiltrating families as dogs and turning their owners or turning _on_ their owners,” Dean said around a mouthful of burger.

Bucky scoffed. “Werewolves. Are you shitting me right now?”

“No, not werewolves. Shifters. Two very different things,” Sam clarified, like that did shit. Bucky looked at Agent O in disbelief, then back at the men. 

“Even supposing I believed you that these things are real,” Bucky allowed finally and he supposed it _could_ be possible. The future was weird, after all, and it had not only the tech he’d expected it to have, but it also had Gods and Magic and who knew what else. “But you have to admit that it sounds pretty far-fetched. Dog people running a sleeper cell?”

“That's what I said!” Dean exclaimed around his food. Sam made a face at Dean’s manners. “The first time we had a rogue pack and believe you me, we’ve seen some weird shit. There is more out there than most people know but trust me, we've seen this sort of thing before and it's always turned ugly.”

“So why do you think it’s connected to my… case?”

Taking the laptop back, Sam tapped at it and turned it to face Bucky again. “Based on the description of the man you’re looking for, we found footage of someone that _could_ have been him getting surrounded and tossed in a van after he stopped to help a dog he found lying in the road.”

Security cam footage played out on the screen and Bucky squinted. The quality wasn’t near as good as SHIELDS or Starks, even, but it was good enough to raise reasonable doubt. Despite odd glitches on the tape, and the weird shine to almost everybody’s eyes, there were enough similarities between the man on the screen and Clint that it _could_ have been him.

Bucky would have to check it out to be sure.

After the meal, and getting the low down on shifters in general, Agent O begged off, leaving Bucky in Sam and Dean’s hands. “I have another job to do, but if you need me, let me know.”

Nodding in agreement, Bucky watched them go, then turned back to Dean and Sam. “All right, you two know more about shifters than I do, so what’s your suggestion here?’

“Well, the footage came from the parking lot of a grocery store a short walk from the entrance of a park, just around the corner from here, in fact. If I was a sleeper pack turning new members, that would be a good place to lie low in the middle of a city.”

Bucky blinked at them. They thought this place was a city? Okay, maybe that was the Brooklynn in him talking, growing up there with Manhattan only a hop, skip and a jump away – and that was before it turned into the glass and steel monstrosity it was _these_ days - but this place was _far_ too small to be a _proper_ city.

God, he just wanted to go home and curl up with Clint at his loft, Lucky at their feet. He was getting real worried now. Not that Clint couldn’t take care of himself but he had some extremely bad luck sometimes and it’d sure make Bucky feel safer if he could get his eyes on him.

Accepting a ride from the brothers – c’mon, tell Bucky he was wrong about that, they acted _exactly_ like brothers – Bucky used the ride over to look up the info for Mine Falls. After reading it, Bucky concluded that Sam wasn’t wrong. The park likely _was_ big enough to hide a few extra dogs as they pulled in new ones and rotated others out to families. It was about half the size of Central Park, after all, if the website he’d pulled up was accurate.

But he swore to god, if either of them suggested they split up and search for clues, he might actually shoot them.

A little.

Thankfully, whatever experience they did or didn’t have, agency or no agency – they’d changed in the Denny’s bathroom into what was obviously clothes they were far more suited to, and involved a lot more flannel than he personally would wear – they were smart enough _not_ to split up.

Not when there were an unknown number of possible enemies lurking in the woods and Bucky, at least, was still very much a city boy.

Hours and hours of trudging through the park while listening to the brothers bickering and way more mosquitos than Bucky had expected, and Bucky was ready to punch something.

This was pointless as fuck.

He was just about to say that when there was a sudden snarl to their left. He spun, raising his arm in a defensive gesture as a dog barreled into him, jaws snapping around his arm.

The sleeve of his coat shredded under the teeth and then the dog was falling away, whimpering.

“Dude, your _arm!”_

“Is now really the time, Dean?” Sam snapped. Bucky was glad to see that both of them had weapons out and they were moving with fluid grace, even as a pack – how many dogs do you need to make up a pack? Bucky was sure that was the sort of trivial information Clint would know – surrounded them with various snarls and growls.

“This doesn’t have to go down badly,” Dean said. “We can talk, mano y mano, y’know, seeing as I can’t dog.”

Sam snorted lightly, like that was funny or something, but Bucky couldn’t possibly see what was so funny about this.

Before Bucky’s eyes, one of the dogs shimmered and twisted and then a man stood there, naked. “Winchesters,” the man snarled. “Hunters. Why should we believe you? It always goes bad for us when Hunters are around, even when we’ve done _nothing_.”

Well, Bucky had been right about their identities being fake. And about them being related, apparently.

“Then why did you attack us?” Sam demanded.

“You come tromping through here, with your silver and your weapons. We know who you are, and you have a reputation. We weren’t about to let you have the upper hand. We’re just protecting ourselves.”

“Don’t you mean upper paw?” Dean asked with a grin. The shifters growled and Sam flashed his brother a very annoyed look. Bucky better step in before things got out of paw – er, hand. Fuck.

Clint would have died laughing at that.

“We’re looking for somebody,” Bucky said. “Someone who’s gone missing, and apparently, several other people have gone missing around here too.”

“We’ve had nothing to do with that,” the shifter said.

“And how do we know we can believe you?”

Someone else shifted, a young woman this time with long enough hair to almost pull a Godiva, not that she seemed concerned in any way of her nakedness. “Because we know who’s responsible.”

“Talk to me,” Dean said.

A smaller dog inched forward, young, not quite a puppy, and nudged at the young girl. She knelt and curled around it protectively. “Kaya’s family were taken, and we took her in when she ran. We’ve taken in a few others as well, but we’re spread out, trying _not_ to attract attention.” She glared at them.

Bucky made a choice, and he holstered the gun he’d reflexively taken out. He stepped closer to the young girl and the pup. A few of the others growl and edge around him. he ignores the others and kneels down beside Kaya and the girl, holding out his hand.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said softly. Kaya looks up at him with haunted eyes, then takes a trembling step forward and bumps her head into his hand and gives it a lick before darting back into the safety of the other girl.

Tension seemed to melt away from everyone after that. Dean and Sam bemusedly putt away their own weapons, though they were still wary, but then the talking started and Bucky about lost the thread of it. More supernatural elements he hadn’t had any idea about before, apparently. So instead, he pulled up a recent picture of Clint and went around asking the shifters if any of them had seen him.

No one had, but one boy shook his head, offering hesitantly. “I don’t think it was him, but there was a guy who looked a little _like_ him a few nights ago, at the Hannafords? Billy and I were seeing a movie at the Chunky’s next door, and when we got out, it was pretty late and it was mostly empty, but then we noticed something going on. We saw a guy get taken right there and we hid. Sorry,” he finished shamefacedly. “We were too scared to do anything.”

“Don’t be sorry. That was the right thing to do,” Bucky said. Jesus, most of this pack or whatever they were, they were just _kids._ But at least he knew it wasn’t Clint. Clint was, he hoped, safe, and not running into anything supernatural, or any weird science experiments.

He ambled back towards Dean and Sam just as they finished up with the leader. “So what’s going on?”

“The threats already moved on,” Sam said.

“Supposedly,” Dean muttered, but it sounded more like a reflex than that he was actually doubting the shifters word. Sam still rolled his eyes at his brother.

“We’ll stick around a few days to verify what they’re telling us, call a few others in to canvas the surrounding towns, see if we can pick out a pattern and figure out where they might be going next. Sorry this was a bust for you, man.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said. “And for letting me tag along. This was… enlightening.” He looked at the surrounding pack, no longer ringed around them with their hackles up. “What about them?”

“We’ve got a friend who might be able to help them out. We’ll get in touch with them, see what they say,” Sam said. “What about you?”

Bucky shrugged. “Guess I’ll hit the road again, after I grab some shut eye. It was a long drive out from –“

His phone rang shrilly – he should probably fix that at some point. The last update had reset all of his preferences - interrupting him and he snatched it out of his pocket an turned away. Thumbing it on, Bucky noted it was Agent O.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Got you a new lead…”

“Great,” Bucky said, walking towards the river and staring out over the sparkling water. “How far?”

“Not as far this time. Grab a room, get some rest, you can easily get there in the morning.”

“I shouldn’t let it wait,” Bucky said. “If it is him, he could be gone by then.”

“You also just had a long ass drive. Get some rest, Agent, that’s an order.”

“Roger that,” Bucky said.

“Texting you the details, let me know when you’re on your way or if you need anything else.”

His phone chirped as Agent O did as promised and he checked it over. “Got it. Thanks for the help.”

Bucky hung up and looked back at the brothers who were finally stepping away from the shifters who were now breaking up and melting back into the trees. Kaya bounded over to him and jumped up to place her paws on his stomach. He gave her head a pat and her ears a scratch – for Clint, he told himself. he was more of a cat person.

“Stay safe, kid,” he said, and she licked his hand again and then ran off with the others.

“All right, let’s get the fuck outta the woods. Gives me the _willies_ ,” Dean said, shuddering lightly.

The three of them made better time leaving, now that they weren’t trying to scour the entire near 400 acres of park, but it was still almost dark by the time they got back out to the car. The black car was the only one left in the lot, blending in with the darkness.

“We’ll give you a ride back out to your car and hey, if you ever need our expertise in the supernatural department, feel free to give us a ring,” Dean said, offering Bucky a card with a list of numbers.

“Sure, if you tell me your _real_ names,” Bucky said with a grin.

Far from being offended, Dean and Sam laughed.

“Sam and Dean Winchester, not _really_ FBI, but you might not want to tell your handlers that. Most of them aren’t ready for the things that go bump in the night.”

After the brothers dropped Bucky off, he went back into the Denny’s for another meal, then hunted down the closest hotel for the night. Agent O had offered, initially, but Bucky needed some space that wasn’t preoccupied with driving.

In the morning, he’d get on his way again.

Would he _ever_ find Clint?

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the end of Bucky's journey - continue reading on going mission reports from both Clint and Bucky as they go across the WORLD looking for each other at [The Great Winterhawk Escape](https://greatwinterhawkescape.tumblr.com/)


End file.
